The long-lived summer days dried and warmed the turf in the meadows. I used
to lie down in solitary corners at full length on my back, so as to feel the
embrace of the earth. The grass stood high above me, and the shadows of the
tree-branches danced on my face. I looked up at the sky, with halfclosed
eyes to bear the dazzling light. Bees buzzed over me, sometimes a butterfly
passed,
there was a hum in the air, greenfinches sang in the hedge. Gradually
entering into the intense life of the summer days--a life which burned
around as if every grass blade and leaf were a torch--I came to feel the
longdrawn life of the earth back into the dimmest past, while the sun of the
moment was warm on me. Sesostris on the most ancient sands of the south,in
ancient, ancient days, was conscious of himself and of the sun. This
sunlight linked me through the ages to that past consciousness. From all
the ages my soul desired to take that soul-life which had flowed through
them as the sunbeams had continually poured on earth. As the hot sands take
up the heat, so would I take up that soul-energy. Dreamy in appearance, I
was breathing full of
existence; I was aware of the grass blades, the flowers, the leaves on hawth
orn and tree. I seemed to live more largely through them, as if each were a
pore through which I drank.
The grasshoppers called and leaped, the greenfinches
sang, the blackbirds happily fluted, all the air hummed with
life. I was plunged deep in existence, and with all that
existence I prayed.

Through every grass blade in the thousand, thousand grasses;
through the million leaves, veined and edge-cut, on bush and
tree; through the song-notes and the marked feathers of the
birds; through the insects' hum and the colour of the butterflies; through